Complicated
by Working-On-Sanity
Summary: Doofenshmirtz and Vanessa discuss the complexity of the platypus. One-shot.


**Note: **Another prompt. The theme is "complicated." And what's more complicated than a certain duck-billed, egg-laying mammal of diminutive proportions?

* * *

"Perry the Platypus is one complicated guy, I'll tell you that." Doofenshmirtz sighed and leaned back against the plush sofa cushions. Beside him, Vanessa idly smoothed the shiny leather of her slacks over her thigh. Her father's frequent discussions of Perry rarely interested her. Although she was quite fond of Perry and even considered him family, she did not think he was quite as difficult to understand as her father claimed.

"Complicated, huh?" Vanessa raised her hand to examine her trim nails. "What'd he do, now?"

Doofenshmirtz always relished being asked this particular question. He shifted, settling himself comfortably before explaining. He very much reminded Vanessa of a teenage girl with gossip gathering behind her tongue.

"Well," he said, "you know that little chirpy thing he does, right?"

Vanessa braced herself, pressing her heels into the floor. "Please don't try to demonstrate."

"Okay, okay." Doofenshmirtz looked mildly disappointed at having missed the opportunity. "_Anyway, _about that. See, I just don't understand it."

"Understand it?"

"I don't get what he's saying when he does it."

Vanessa averted her gaze, knowing that, if she stared into her father's earnest eyes, she would laugh. "Well, Dad… Perry might not be saying anything. You're over-thinking it. For all you know, it could be just a sound."

"I doubt that," Doofenshmirtz said. He folded his arms and gazed up vacantly at the ceiling. "I was reading about it in a book. Remember when we went to the library last week? You got some of those new fashion magazines, and I got a book about platypuses."

"This should be interesting," Vanessa said in a mutter as Doofenshmirtz pushed himself from the couch. He went to the dining table and lifted a few blueprints. When he found nothing but half a doughnut, he disappeared into his room. He returned a minute later, triumphantly holding up a thin paperback book. The glossy cover reflected the light, but Vanessa saw a photograph of a fat blue platypus flash across the front.

Doofenshmirtz sat down beside her, the couch cushion sinking beneath his weight. He scooted closer to Vanessa and held the book between them, trying at the same time to turn the pages. Every photograph depicted a chunky walleyed platypus in the same boring posture. Vanessa was not impressed.

"How do we know those aren't all the same platypus?" she said. "They look the same as Perry, only fatter."

"_Perry_ works out," Doofenshmirtz said. He found the page he had been searching for and held it down with his thumb. The book's spine creaked a little. "Look here."

Vanessa looked. "'Platypuses communicate with chirps and chatters. Similar calls are used in all situations with only slight variations. The platypus can distinguish the voices of its young from those of unfamiliar platypuses.'" She finished reading and glanced at Doofenshmirtz as if requesting an explanation.

"Platypuses have different _calls, _Vanessa," he said. "So _obviously_ they're saying something. I tried looking up sound files of the different chirps and stuff on the com_pu_ter, but all of them sound the same to me. Platypuses," he muttered, talking more or less to himself. "Platypuses! They're so _com_plicated."

"What's this?" said Vanessa. She pointed to the book that Doofenshmirtz still held between them. Several pages in the middle of the book had been folded over in half. "You aren't supposed to mess up library books, Dad."

Suddenly sheepish, Doofenshmirtz closed the book to prevent Vanessa from trying to peek at the hidden pages. "Um, that chapter is, uh, about platypus reproduction." A hint of color darkened his sunken cheeks. "I didn't want to accidentally open up to see _that, _you know."

"If you ask me," Vanessa said with a sniff, "_you're _the complicated one. Not Perry."

"Really, Vanessa." Doofenshmirtz leaned over to drop the book on the coffee table. "I mean, what if Perry the Platypus gets _hurt_ or something, and he's chirping to _tell _me he's hurt, and I think he's growling at me?"

"Perry doesn't get hurt."

"I _said _'if.'"

"Still, that's a pretty unlikely scenario." Vanessa shrugged, her monotonous voice raising a bit. "I think you're making too big of a deal over this, anyway. We've known Perry for, like, a really long time. It's never bothered you before that he can't talk."

"This isn't an issue of talking––this is an issue of under_standing. _Lack of communication has always been our biggest problem."

_Is that what happened with you and Mom? _Vanessa wanted to ask, but didn't. She raised her hand to stifle a yawn and wondered if her new music album had finished downloading.

"Maybe Perry thinks the same thing about you," she said. "You talk so fast sometimes that a regular person can't understand you, let alone a little platypus. Maybe he has just as much trouble understanding you as you do him."

Doofenshmirtz's eyes widened, then narrowed contemplatively. "I never thought of _that. _It's kind of hard for me to re_mem_ber that he isn't a person. I feel a little better, now, though––it's about time we have mutual feelings."

Vanessa stood up and brushed nonexistent lint from the front of her jacket. She fully intended to retreat to the sanctuary of the back room, whether her father had finished talking or not.

As though Doofenshmirtz had not noticed that Vanessa was ready to leave, he rested his chin in his cupped palm and stared thoughtfully at the wall. "Sometimes I'm not sure if Perry likes for me to talk to him or not. One day he'll be smiling at me like we're the best of friends, and the next––_bam! _He tries to kick my teeth in or bash my _brains _out my ears. He's worse than a teenager. How much more complicated can you get?"

Vanessa smoothed her hair back and turned toward her room, leaving Doofenshmirtz to grumble about Perry. Before Vanessa ducked through the door, she paused and rested her hand on the frame. She remembered a saying she had heard once while watching some romance drama movie.

"Hey, Dad?" She craned her neck to look at him, her expression flat. "I've heard that all relationships need compromise. You know, give and take, or something. But," she added uneasily, "that applies to normal people in normal relationships. We've established that you and Perry are definitely not normal."

"Compromise, huh?" Doofenshmirtz seemed to ignore Vanessa's last comment. "Like I can talk _less _and Perry the Platypus can talk _more?_"

Vanessa pressed her lips together against a sigh. "Sure, Dad. Sounds great." She hurried into the room and shut the door, fearing that if she listened to her father's idle chatter and farfetched ideas any longer, she would lose her own ability to think comprehensively.

_Yep, "complicated" is right, _she thought. She lifted her earphones from her desk and plugged them into her ears to drown out the sound of her father's voice. Now comfortable, she closed her eyes.

* * *

**Note: **Nothing will ever amuse and cheer me quite as much as the relationship Doofenshmirtz and Perry share.


End file.
